Cougar

Jeff Johnston,

Managing Editor

Thirteen miles from the nearest paved road in Utah's northeastern backcountry, high on an impossible bluff, a predator stalks its prey through snow-filtered moonlight. It has incredible night vision, padded feet, wicked claws, hearing that finds the feeding mule deer below like radar and canines that can sever the spine of an animal that vastly outweighs it. In one violent whirr, the 130-pound masterpiece of muscle and stealth pours onto a mule deer and seizes its neck like a Conibear trap. Moments later, the mountain lion drags its lifeless prey up a rock face while heavy snowflakes erase what few crimson clues remain of the deer's demise.

As sunlight crests the mountain's peak, the predator takes another half-pound of flesh from the softest parts and begins to cover the rest for later. Then suddenly its ears attune to the distant, detested, bawling sounds of its only enemy in this country as they resound up the ridge and grow nearer. With a distended belly, the cougar will have trouble running. This time it may have to fight.

Three miles away, a hunter struggles to keep within earshot of Suzi, his lead hound. He'd cut the track the evening before, grabbed a restless night's sleep in his pickup and put the hounds back on it two hours before dawn. By sunup he knows the 5-inch-wide print like it is his own, as does the relentless Walker with the talented snout who lives to fill it with fresh scent of feline. In this wet snow and with this wind, the hunter likes the odds, but he knows it's never even close to a sure thing. Any second the big tom could bound up sheer rock and over miles of mountain. What if he can't get there fast enough and his beloved hounds mix with the cat? Sweat sluices down his back as he picks each snow-laden foot up past the other and crunches them down, metronome-like, in the energy-sapping powder.

When bawls give to frenetic yaps, it's evident age-old enemies have spied each other. Spurred, the hunter double-times and trudges uphill alone, as determined as a man can trudge, directly toward the sounds of hell and its trappings. As the houndsman nears the ruckus in the pines, he thumbs the leather thong of his holster and peeks between the cylinder and gate of the Super Blackhawk. This time it's rimmed with five .44 caliber hollow-points, because this is not another practice run. This is opening day.

Did You Know?

Set up active decoys where you don't want geese to land. Use sleeping and resting decoys to signal the area has been checked out and it's safe enough to drop in and nap.

Introducing the Ram Outdoorsman —a new feature package designed for North American outdoor enthusiasts. Ram Outdoorsman takes all of the features most useful to hunters, fishermen, campers and boaters, and packages them into one model. Outdoorsman combines convenience, off-road capability and trailer towing hardware in one package.

Ram continues "Letters for Lyrics" and its quest to send 1 million letters to soldiers. You can now write your letter electronically at ramtrucks.com/lettersforlyrics, and in return you can receive a free CD, Breaking Southern Ground. This exclusive compilation, not sold in stores, features Southern Ground Artists Zac Brown Band, Sonia Leigh, Nic Cowan and Levi Lowrey.

Like the fossilized skeletons of its ancestors displayed in the Smithsonian, a 12-foot alligator can be scary even when it's dead—something that Shooting Illustrated's Adam Heggenstaller learned in person during a gator hunt in Florida. Read More »

a new feature package designed for North American outdoor enthusiasts... Read More »

40.9 million

number of total breeding ducks estimated to exist in North America

13.1 million

number of ducks harvested in the U.S. during the 2009-2010 season

3.3 million

number of geese harvested in the U.S. during the 2009-2010 season

1.1 million

number of active waterfowlers in the U.S. during the 2009-2010 season

13.2

average number of ducks killed per hunter during the 2009-2010 season

900 million

dollars spent on waterfowling-related expenses in 2006

fast fact

Black bears feed up to 20 hours per day prior to winter denning to accumulate fat (energy). Adult males may gain more than 100 pounds in just a few weeks when acorn production is heavy. Their diet consists mainly of grasses, roots, berries and insects (75 percent of it, in fact). As omnivores, they also eat eggs, fish, mammals and carrion. But they aren’t very effective predators.